City watch. Lifestyle.

`Wild Ones' Say It Simply Isn't So

Bikers Detour From Rough Image In Legislative Fight

February 26, 1997|By Jon Anderson, Tribune Staff Writer.

In the basement of the Abbey Pub, below the din of the big biker party upstairs, a man known as Jo-mama stood by the row of chili pots and talked of Harleys, wrenches and the first night he'd ever felt close to his father.

It was years ago. He was 14. His father had torn apart his own Harley and laid out the parts on the floor of the family garage. Then, said Jo-mama, "my dad goes, `Until you can put it together, you ain't ready to ride.' "

By dawn, Jo-mama had it ready. His father said he'd "better try it out first--to make sure it's safe." The old man "fired up the machine, kicked into gear, flew out of the garage, sped across the street and spun out on the neighbor's front lawn, right under their bedroom window."

It was an important lesson, admitted Jo-mama, who got his nickname later for being a mechanic always willing to help out a biker in trouble.

"I forgot to hook up the brake rod."

For a bikers rally, the all-night scene last weekend on three floors of the Abbey, at 3420 W. Grace St., just off the Edens Expressway, was oddly peaceful, though it often resembled the space-jockey bar in "Star Wars."

Monitoring the crowd was about 3,000 pounds of human flesh, on a dozen beefy bodies, wearing intercom headphones and orange shirts reading SECURITY.

Despite an engaging sense of menace, the purpose of the evening was peaceful enough to raise several thousand dollars through a dance, unisex tattoo competition and chili-making for a biker support group, ABATE, which stands for A Brotherhood Aimed Toward Education.

"It's not like Marlon Brando and `The Wild One.' We don't like that image," said Michael Kerr, local chapter head of the national organization. These days, he noted, pointing to faces in the crowd, "we have every trade--plumbers, welders, electricians, firemen, cops." Others mentioned Dan Aykroyd, actor--and biker.

Representing 180,000 bikers licensed in Illinois, ABATE seeks to push interests threatened by ordinances banning bikers from some city streets, laws demanding helmet use and emerging technology that someday may limit highways to electronically aimed cars and trucks.

To bikers, such weapons as support groups, fundraising and a political agenda are modern necessities. Without them, Kerr warned the crowd, "in 20 years, we might find ourselves off the road."

To many bikers, federal regulations requiring states to pass helmet-use laws or lose a portion of highway funding, smack of, as one put it, "the thin edge of a wedge" of government interference in biker affairs.

"We don't say helmets are good or bad," said Skip Robinson, another ABATE officer. "We say, `Don't force us to wear them.' What we want is freedom of choice. Let each rider decide."

"We send 1,000 bikers to Springfield every year for a rally in May," said Jay Schellerer, the group's legislative director who also is working to reverse biker bans on several streets in West Rogers Park and in an area around Navy Pier. "The police should deal with noisemakers like with anybody who makes a racket," he said, "not just ban all bikers."

These days, a hog can set a biker back $10,000 to $25,000, with up to $25,000 more for customizing, principally chrome and mirrors, and suitable clothing and adornment. One woman, Kerry, was the hit of one corner when she pulled back her blouse to reveal a back tattoo of Emmett Kelly.

"All the stuff in your daily life, like mortgage payments, that's behind you," mused president Kerr. "You're out. All the elements around you. One with reality. If it rains, you get wet," he said.

Each year, ABATE members ride from the downtown lakefront to a Highland Park roadhouse for coffee. They gather Christmas toys for needy children. Their "Spring Fling Picnic," in the LaBagh Woods Forest Preserve on the Northwest Side, provides competitions for riders.

Other bikers are into the arts, noted Santo, organizer of a Biker Poetry Slam to be held at the Outlaws Chicago Clubhouse, at 2601 W. 25th St., on Friday at 8 p.m. "We read poems about riding around, womanizing, drugs, the whole gamut," said Santo, who appeared last fall on "The David Letterman Show," illustrating one of the "Top 10 Biker Pickup Lines."

His line was, "I left my Volvo at home."

Often, bikers are misunderstood, said Dave "Dog Killer" White. "I ran over the only black and white dingo in the United States in Minnesota in 1984," he said, explaining his nickname. "We tried to comfort the owner. I told him, `Look, you've still got the only black and white dingo in the United States. It's just that now he's dead.' "